MAN IN CONTROL

Tim Blair

–,
Thursday,
December,
20,
2012,(12:38pm)

Caring feminist Hugo Schwyzer – billed as “author, speaker and Professor of History and Gender Studies at Pasadena City College” – offers Fairfax readers an anti-male line on the Connecticut shootings:

In killing others before dying on his own terms, Lanza, like so many rampage killers before him, lived out a perverse male fantasy of total control. When Australia saw that horrific fantasy lived out in Port Arthur in 1996, it took strong steps to ensure that such a tragedy could never be repeated.

For all our expressions of grief in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings, Americans – particularly white men – remain stubbornly enchanted by the freedoms that they imagine the gun represents.

Schwyzer blew out the pilot lights on the stove in his apartment and turned up the gas while his ex-girlfriend was passed out. When neighbors smelled the gas, they intervened.

You can read Hugo’s own account of this 1998 incident – “I pulled the oven away from the wall, leaving the gas line intact, positioning it so that the gas was blowing directly at the passed-out young woman” – here. He’s deleted it at his site.

Most of these killers are ill and/or impaired. It has nothing to do with questions of ‘feeling’ or ‘seeming’ manly. If they cannot access these weapons then they can do little harm. Guns do not require proximity to the victim nor much energy to operate and therefore inflict maximum damage to multiple victims. None of these children or adults should have died and wouldn’t have if the weapon had not been available. Guns are not necessary unless you are involved in environmental management, policing or the military.

All good except that prohibition doesn’t work. They try to prohibit drugs. No luck. Alchohol. No luck. Illegal gambling. No luck. See the pattern.
If nut job can’t get a gun legally from the store he kills his Mum. If she didn’t have guns then he would buy them on the black market. There he is then. Only the crims & the nut nobs will have guns. You have just created another situation where gun possesion is necessary. Legitimate self defence.
Guns are not a good thing in some hands but you can’t uninvent firearms. You can’t wish them away.

frisbee replied to frisbee
Fri 21 Dec 12 (11:25pm)

No, but you can and should register the gun and severely restrict it’s availability and use. Drinking alcohol is unhealthy in excess but it is rarely lethal en masse. Assault weapons have no place in our society - they are combat instruments for a reason. Your argument, though it has merit, is not borne out by objective analysis. Note the considerable difference between gun-crime stats for the U.S. and those for Australia and the like. Guns have about as much place in society as RPGs and genetically-engineered biological weapons. Cheers.

rickw replied to frisbee
Sat 22 Dec 12 (09:44am)

frisbee,

If you are into objective analysis, then go and look at the charts of firearm ownership vs homicide for industrialised nations.

Very hard to draw ANY conclusions about correlation. In fact if the chart didn’t have the labels and you were asked to identify the correlation, most people would say that there wasn’t one.

Society and culture are the issue, NOT guns.

So, objective analysis says that if the societal and cultural conditions are right, any restriction on guns is pointless. I would argue that Australia has those conditions everywhere except Lakemba and Broadmeadows, and they’re using guns anyway.

steveH replied to frisbee
Sat 22 Dec 12 (12:38pm)

None of these children or adults should have died and wouldn’t have if the weapon had not been available.

frisbee’s right. Unless the would be assailant had access to, say, fertilizer and oil, dynamite, petrol, large knives, a motor vehicle, ...

All of which have been used at one time or other to kill multiple victims in a single event.

Perhaps it’s just lack of imagination on his part; sadly, nutters who really want to do damage don’t suffer from such a lack.

frisbee replied to frisbee
Sun 23 Dec 12 (07:21am)

And yet there are more shootings. From a distance.

Nothing is as fast, as simple or as effective as a gun as a weapon. Ask any sniper.

By all means, let’s replace guns with bombs, flame-throwers, machetes and customised tanks. Sarcasm’s easier than facing reality. If you had lost a child or loved one in this massacre your view (and your naive flippancy) would be a thing of the past, Mr H.

Adding more weapons to the mix doesn’t render any of them any less lethal. They’re weapons not props, genius.

For all our expressions of grief in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings, Americans – particularly white men – remain stubbornly enchanted by the freedoms that they imagine the gun represents.

Could these be one and the same “group of older white men” referred to by Senator Milne as the ones who don’t accept a female PM because they’re pushing for a full inquiry into the AWU/WRA affair?
See here.

Chinese officials said they arrested the suspect who allegedly stabbed 23 children in a primary school last Friday, saying that he was “strongly psychologically affected by rumors of the upcoming end of the world,” state-run media reported.

Small but critical point - in the US a lecturer at uni or at community college is referred to as a “professor” unlike here in Australia where the title is far more esteemed, being of higher honour than senior lecturer, reader,dean or associate professor. It’s a title given to generally the academic head of faculty. An emeritus professor is a retired professor.
As I have both taught at TAFE and lectured at uni please now refer to me as Emeritus Professor 2 Bob.

That kind of contortionist fare is standard for Daily Life - a site that gives voice to vicious cyber bullies like Clementine Ford and Clem Bastow who use their popularity with the hipster set to smear their imagined online enemies.

Please give all the facts about him. He learned a lesson about his debauched ways, with the episode you mentioned brought him to his senses. I believe his ethics today are based on christianity, which explains his turn around and his respect for women and explains his pro women manifesto.

When will governments and do gooders stop blaming gun ownership for the increased and still increasing violence in our society. Can they not see that the cause of the problem is the increasingly violent video games, movies and DVD’s ? Is this industry too big for the government to handle ?

How many of the 140 odd shootings in Sydney were done with registered guns?I blame the government for employing people who are allowed to let prohibited articles into this country and the lenient judges who slap these people on the hand when convicted.---One of the most dangerous weapons in this country is the vehicle;yet when stolen or used illegally everyone dumbs it down by calling it joy riding--and for the screaming anti gun lobby who support the use of mind damaging illegal drugs, -How many people do they kill,shorten life,divert medical resources,or damage the lives of other people?GET REAL PEOPLE AND SORT OUT ALL THESE PROBLEMS-NOT JUST THE ONES THAT DON’T AFFECT YOU. 1.How many people have died from gunshot wounds from illegal guns? 2.How many people have died from the effects of illegal drugs most of you use?3. How many people have died from the use of vehicles?

In Kinshasa ordinary people had stopped building houses, construction stopped mid stride, most ordinary peoples assessment for the future was that there wasn’t one.

Kisengani was a different story, the place looked upbeat, people building nice little brick houses on the edge of the Congo river, full of hope. Of course all that progress and hope could be swept away in an instant, because the general population were completely disarmed and completely reliant on a dis-functional Government for protection.